Huxford and Skelly and Anor

This matter concerned an application by an intervener, seeking to be substituted as a joint debtor with the husband and wife for a sum of $62,000. The court was required to determine the extent of the parties' liabilities to the intervener and how those liabilities should be discharged, as well as to make orders for property settlement between the husband and wife.

The court was required to determine the legal and beneficial ownership of various assets and superannuation entitlements between the parties, and to make orders for the payment of debts and the distribution of sale proceeds. Specifically, the court had to consider the mechanism for the repayment of the intervener's debt, the property settlement sum payable by the husband to the wife, and the consequences of the husband's failure to make that payment.

Fowler J ordered that the wife and husband be substituted as joint debtors to the intervener for $62,000, to be paid from the net sale proceeds of the "B property" and any outstanding balance to be paid equally by the parties. The parties were to charge their entitlement to the B sale proceeds with this obligation and indemnify each other for half the remaining debt. The husband was ordered to pay the wife $59,757 within 90 days as property settlement. In the event of non-payment, the husband was to procure the sale of the "R property" through auction and private treaty, with proceeds applied first to sale costs and mortgage discharge, then to the wife for her settlement sum, and the balance to the husband. Each party was declared the legal and beneficial owner of property and superannuation in their name, except as otherwise provided, and each was solely responsible for their own debts, indemnifying the other. The Registrar was appointed to execute necessary documents if a party failed to do so.